Seminar in Contemporary Philosophy - A

Categories and Ways of Being.

Categories, the highest genera of things, have long been a topic in metaphysics. Disputed in number, membership, and method of determination since antiquity, the topic of categories largely disappeared from philosophy for much of the twentieth century. More recently, the nature and the status of categories has again returned to discussion, and the old questions have reasserted themselves once more. Notable philosophers, including most prominently Aristotle and, in the twentieth century, Roman Ingarden, have claimed that each category corresponds to its own way or mode of being. The aim of this course is to trace crucial phases of the controversy over categories and ways of being, outline the proposed methods of determining them, and pursue an evaluation of the relative merits of various proposed schemes.

Preliminary and Background Reading

Aristotle – Categories

I. Kant – Critique of Pure Reason, “Table of Categories”

R. G. Collingwood – An Essay on Philosophical Method (Ch. 4–6)

P. F. Strawson – Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics

W. V. Quine – “On What There Is”

J. Anderson – Space, Time and the Categories

R. Ingarden – The Controversy over the Existence of the World (Vol. I)

R. Grossmann – The Categorial Structure of the World

R. M. Chisholm – A Realistic Theory of Categories

E. J. Lowe – The Four-Category Ontology.

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In presenza

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Evaluation method: essay.